Aimless
βThis will enhance the combat prowess of these Decepticons...β
βVorath to Lord Zarak, Head Masters #4
Latest update: Jun 18, 2019
These plots show the probability of doing 3 non-combat damage while attacking with the Manifold Ion Particle Blaster (i.e. Raider Aimless in his "weapon mode"). These rates are plotted as a function of the number of white cards in our deck. They assume 6 π±π± cards, and 0, 3, or 6 non-blue cards (click on the figure). The easiest way to increase our success rate is using Bold and/or Plan. Therefore, these scenarios are compared to the reference case in which we cannot rely on neither of them (black curve, "no Bold/Plan" in these figures). Without Bold or Plan, we would need to increase our odds of flipping more than two cards by playing a reasonable amount of white cards (about ten). Still, our chances wouldn't get better than a mediocre 50%.
Plan: Only Plan 1 is considered in these notes, as 100% success rate is easily approached with Plan 2. Data Pad and Secret Dealings are probably our best options in this case. Putting a π±π± card on top is clearly better than choosing a π card. Our rates of success are about 100% and 75% respectively, in a deck with 6 white cards, and no non-blue cards. As expected, both these rates are much higher than the 45% we would achieve with no Plan.
Bold: It's not a surprise either that even just Bold 1 grants about 100% success rate, as long as we keep the number of white and non-blue cards low (e.g. no non-blue cards and about 6 white cards). As Bold is usually granted by orange cards and/or weapons, Combat Training comes to mind. It requires a weapon, but that's not a restriction in this case. Besides, in a heavy-blue deck, the situational Tough 1 becomes extremely valuable. Another interesting aspect of Raider Aimless is that he gives characters with built-in Bold a legitimate place in blue decks.
Non-blue cards: By clicking on the previous plots, it is possible to visualize how much our rate of success is worsened by the presence of non-blue cards in our deck. It's fairly intuitive that planning for π±π± is more efficient than Bold 1 when playing non-blue cards. In a deck with 6 white and 6 non-blue cards, we succeed with a rate of 85% in the first case, 75% in the second. One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall could be especially useful with Aimless, as Tough 3 in a heavy-blue deck might keep the private alive much longer than we want. And, of course, a correctly timed Peace Through Tyranny means 2 consecutive attacks, and 6 non-combat damage.
